DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - WASHINGTON D.C.: THERE IS NO 'AMERICAN' ISLAM

US imam questions if “American” Islam exists

WASHINGTON - Yahya Hendi is not sure that an “American Islam” exists. When the Palestinian-born imam talks about his religion, though, it sounds as if it has become as integrated into American life as he has.

Hendi, 40, is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution that in 1999 became the first university in the United States to hire a full-time imam. He teaches a course on inter-religious dialogue there along with a priest and a rabbi.

He is also chaplain at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and a mosque in Frederick, another suburb north of the capital. He lectures around the country to explain Islam to non-Muslims and US religious pluralism to Muslims.

The question of whether Islam can be “westernized” — a key aim of European officials seeking a “British Islam” or “French Islam” to help integrate Muslim immigrants — seems to be more than an ocean away for this pragmatic thinker.

“Islam is a very inclusive religion, but Muslims have given it a bad name,” Hendi, who was born in Nablus on the West Bank and came to the United States 20 years ago, told Reuters.

“Islam demands that Muslims adapt to their circumstances,” he said, arguing that Islam had taken on some local customs and rejected others ever since it appeared in Arabia 1,400 years ago.

The two million or so US Muslims are well-equipped to adapt. Of the two-thirds born abroad, many are well-educated, in contrast to mostly poorer Muslim immigrants in Europe.

The other third are black Muslims or children of immigrants.

Of the 400 Muslims in Georgetown’s 14,000-strong student body, 93 percent were born in the United States.

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